Hi all, sorry for the basic question, but I can't find the answer anywhere. I'm returning to BIAB after many years' absence. I see there is both a "Songs" folder and a "MySongs" folder. What's the difference? And where should I put my collection of several thousand .SGU and .MGU files? Thanks!

The Songs folder is automatically created when you install Band-in-a-Box. It is empty when you first install Band-in-a-Box. It sounds like "MySongs" is a folder that you had created at some point.

Please check the contents of both folders. It is best to save your songs to the same folder that you were using before in order to stay consistent.

Thanks, Chantelle. Or is it the opposite? I’m pretty sure from the documentation and previous posts that the MySongs folder is part of the installled files, and is the default home folder for Song Picker. But I’m not sure whether the Songs folder is something I dragged over from the earlier version, or whether it’s also part of the install.

You can save your songs anywhere you like.

Oh my! Somewhere in my long history of using BIAB my songs got placed in the "Ear Training" folder. Why? I have no idea.

Sounds like I need to move them to a more sensible location.

Thanks all!

...Deb

This:

Just choose where you want to save them, and save them there. Quite simple really.

Thanks, all! This is helpful. But let me probe some more…

I’ve finally read through the entire user manual for 2021. I can see definitively that the Songs folder and the MySongs folder are loaded as part of the program. Here is how they’re described on pp. 346-347 of the manual:

“MySongs: This is your “home” folder for the SongPicker. You can put any songs to this folder.”

“Songs: This is the default folder for storing your Band-in-a-Box songs, the default folder that is selected by the File | Open Song menu command. It includes the basic Band-in-a-Box song library, and the songs you make yourself will be stored here unless you specify a custom folder for them.”

Can anyone explain what the difference is. And why they’re both here?

I understand now that songs can be put anywhere, and I can change my default file for storing songs. But I’m intrigued about why these two seemingly overlapping folders exist? The language here is confusing, and they seem redundant. I just want my songs in one place, to avoid confusion, but can’t really figure this out.

Real world example: I just bought a bunch of Django tunes rendered for BIAB, from Djangobooks. They come packaged in their own file folder. Assuming I’m going to put that folder inside either the Songs or the MySongs folder, which one and why!

Thanks!

That’s a good observation. It does bear further examination.

A few random thoughts:

In 2018, major changes were made to use many more folders to reduce the huge number of files in certain folders. The installation invoked a cleanup Utility. This can be invoked separately. My point is that a folder, and/or the documentation, may be a remnant. I will research this and report it to the developers. However, my own installation is far from pristine:

For decades, I have stored all my BIAB songs - many hundreds of them - in folders of my own making. I have two main folders, Matt Arrangements and Matt Originals. Within each are many sub folders. Within my Originals I have folders such as Big Band, Church, Orchestra, Classical, Jazz Combo etc. Within Arrangements I have those categories then further folders by composer names. As mentioned above, store your songs wherever you want.

I then regularly use SyncToy to back up those songs to two other locations.

Song (files) you create can be stored in the My Songs folder if you want to store song files that you've created there. If you want to store song files you create somewhere else, that is okay too. PG Music created the empty folder in response to the many questions from beginners regarding where to store song files that they created.

The Songs folder is where PG Music stores some of the song files they create.

Thank you all! Very helpful.

With 'MySongs', I suspect that you are seeing a reference to a legacy folder. I have both also, but MySongs was created much, much earlier.

In the 'Songs' folder there is a file 'AboutSongsFolder.txt' with this message:
This folder can optionally be used to store your own songs, and can be set as the home directory for the Song Picker in Band-in-a-Box


If you needed to choose, I would use the 'Songs' folder.

I concur with VideoTrack. I just checked my audiophile drives for the last few years. The MySongs folder is not present on new drives, but the Songs folder is. It is empty, however, except for the message in the post just above this one.

If you have songs in a MySongs folder, just copy them wherever you like, and then you could delete that folder to avoid confusion.